How to Text on a Computer with Google Messages (PC or Mac)
Would you like to view and reply to your text messages from the convenience of your computer? Well, it's actually a lot easier than you think, and I'm going to show you exactly how to do it.
Now, number one, why would you want to have access to your text messages on your computer or laptop?
Well, number one is convenience. How often have you been working at your desktop or laptop computer, and your phone is binging off to the side, and you're going back and forth, and back and forth, here at the computer, and then here replying to a message, and then back to the computer.
What if you could have it all in the screen in front of you? And then number two, I don't know if you're like me, but I can type a whole lot faster on a full-size keyboard
rather than just my two thumbs. So let me walk you through exactly how to set this up. Within your web browser, do a search for Google Messages or you can go directly to messages.google.com, and you'll come to a screen like this.
Now, if Google Messages is not your default texting app on your phone, you can go ahead and select Download for Android here. But I'm going to assume that you're already using Google Messages for SMS and texting on your device.
So what we want to do is click on Messages for web, and it's going to give us a set of very simple instructions as to how we can pair this with our phone. So first things first, we need to open up our phone. We're going to open up the Messages app. And in the top left-hand corner,
at least on most of your operating systems, you'll see that little hamburger menu.
We're going to open up our Messages menu and down about halfway, we see device pairing. We're going to select Device pairing, and that's going to, again, invite us to go to messages.google.com. But because we're already there, we just need to select QR code scanner. I'm going to select that. And now, all we need to do is aim our phone
at the computer screen. And now, our phone is paired. Now in front of us on our browser, we have access to all of our previous messages, and we can continue those conversations or start a new one.
Now, you'll see that it will prompt us if we want to remember this computer. That means it will keep our phone paired. So if this is your primary computer, I would recommend you select Yes. That means you won't have
to go through this pairing process every single time. And don't forget, this is a perfect pairing between the two, so they will never be out of sync. For example, if I walk away from my computer for 15 minutes and I do some texting away, everything will still be visible here on the Google Messages for my desktop.
So it doesn't matter which device I choose to use, I will always remain perfectly in sync. But what if you don't want to deal with your text messages within your browser because you often are going back and forth between different tabs, or what if you accidentally close this tab?
Well, Google has a solution for that as well. If you use the Chrome Web Browser
and come all the way here to the right-hand corner, we're going to select those three dots. About halfway down, you will see this Install Messages option. Now, this will only be visible when you are on the messages.google.com site.
So if I click Install Messages, it's going to prompt me: Do I want to install this app? I'm going to say Yes, install. Now, I have my own desktop app, which is separate from my web browser.
Here, you can see in my task bar, it will remain down below. So I don't have to keep it within my browser. I don't have to keep it visible. I can just expand it and close it whenever I need to.
But if you want to enjoy even more convenience with your communication and you're a Gmail user, be sure to watch this video next where I show you a little known tip, which may change the way you think about using Gmail filters.
